Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 08-13-2009, 08:07 AM

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

But if Paul accepts an historical Jesus I don't see the point of mythicism or agnosticism, do you? You don't have top accept the creedal Jesus, but there is certainly a historical one there.

Oh, Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie, where is your critical approach to the text? Paul tells us that he had a revelation of Jesus from god. Can you test that revelation? Can you say what exactly it was? Was Paul in his right mind when he got the right version of messianism that clashed so markedly with the Jerusalem messianists? Is this guy sane who gets caught up to the third heaven? Is he on drugs? Is this a psychotic break?

Whatever it is, Paul doesn't need any information from other people about a historical Jesus to believe he is real. His revelation clearly makes any historical Jesus irrelevant. Just mull over the words of Gal 1:11-12. He can believe his Jesus is real without any real world knowledge of him. He had a revelation!

spin

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:15 AM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

Paul's letters would have accretions with or without the later authors writing in his name.

Which of course puts an obligation on you if you want to use Paul to reflect a later orthodoxy.

I don't want to reflect a later orthodoxy. I want to view the period from 30-50.

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Given that Mark is written so much later than Paul it is a secondary source in christian literature. You can convince yourself about Mark, but I th ink you are playing to your own biases.

Since when is 10-20 years "so much later"?

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Seriously, how much of this is apologetics? Authors may change their minds, but there are always discourse concerns when analyzing text. What you are saying is an attempt to sweep discourse rough cuts under the carpet.

Why is it that you are critical when other people argue things but when it comes to your own view all of a sudden your methods are acceptable? It is a known fact that writing does not always occur at one sitting and that it does not occur in a vacuum. I did not to say not to use this but it must be used in tandem with other things. You are the one apologizing here as you obviously think it far easier to demonstrate an interpolation than it actually is.

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It would be hard to have a Pauline corpus without having some Pauline content, wouldn't it? Our major problem is that Paul has been in the hands of orthodoxy for a very long time, an orthodoxy which enforced apostolic succession, the priority of Peter, the lordship of Jesus, and various other features not necessarily reflected in Paul.

I wasn't aware that "orthodoxy" existed ca. 150 (via p46 found in Egypt ca. 200, probably not the place of its first origin, and also including Hebrews which requires development). Please enlighten me.

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Try here for a presentation on the side-tracking of Paul's Jewish supper. (Most of the others I've dealt with in the archives, but finding them is an issue.) If you want to go on with the Pauline supper, you could start another thread and I'll handle it with you there.

I read that thread and I saw a textual curiosity here or there, but nothing indicating interpolation.

Vinnie

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinnie

But if Paul accepts an historical Jesus I don't see the point of mythicism or agnosticism, do you? You don't have top accept the creedal Jesus, but there is certainly a historical one there.

Oh, Vinnie, Vinnie, Vinnie, where is your critical approach to the text? Paul tells us that he had a revelation of Jesus from god. Can you test that revelation? Can you say what exactly it was? Was Paul in his right mind when he got the right version of messianism that clashed so markedly with the Jerusalem messianists? Is this guy sane who gets caught up to the third heaven? Is he on drugs? Is this a psychotic break?

Whatever it is, Paul doesn't need any information from other people about a historical Jesus to believe he is real. His revelation clearly makes any historical Jesus irrelevant. Just mull over the words of Gal 1:11-12. He can believe his Jesus is real without any real world knowledge of him. He had a revelation!

spin

You do know what the word "If" means right? You went completely on a tangent. That Paul had revelation hardly mitigates any historical details in the text, IF they exist. You offer us a non sequitur.

You call Paul insane, but his writings do not bear this out. He is simply religious. There is a difference. Paul may have been many things, but a man of low intelligence or a lunatic does not appear to be one of them.

Vinnie

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:18 AM

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Originally Posted by Steven Carr

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

They were also collected by Marcion (who apparently might have edited them). We would see vastly different forms scattered about and quoted if all the early copies were heavily mutilated. Do we see this in the manuscript record?

What we do see are very standardised names for these letters.

Which means one source collected and named the collection we have now.

If the collections had come from different sources, we would expect to see names of the letters like 'Paul's letter from Damascus' , 'Paul's letter to Silvanus', whatever.

But the letters are named uniformly, using a pattern that Paul himself would never have needed to use.

So all the collections we see now must have come from one anthology, so we should not expect to see other heavily mutated versions, no matter what changes that original collector made (or which versions of competing manuscripts he may have had available to choose from)

So basically, if the manuscripts evidence was different cry wolf. If the manuscript evidence is good, cry wolf. I get it ....

Vinnie

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:21 AM

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Originally Posted by dog-on

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

One reference to a historical Jesus by Paul demonstrates that Paul believed in a historical Jesus. The alleged slence in support of a mythicist Jesus in Paul crumbles. All of Paul has to be devoid for mythicism, but only one positive reference to historicism. If the mythcists are correct, much of Paul is simply nuetral---could be a God turned man or a man turned God.....it only takes one piece of historical data to argue for man turned God. The opposite requires a complete lack of evidence. We are again, speaking of the beliefs of Paul.

But if Paul accepts an historical Jesus I don't see the point of mythicism or agnosticism, do you? You don't have top accept the creedal Jesus, but there is certainly a historical one there.

Vinnie

Perhaps Paul's editor simply wanted it to seem like Paul referred to a non spiritual Jesus.

Perhaps Paul's docetist collector around 90-100 C.E. removed many of the clear historical Jesus details in the Pauline Corpus. There might have been so many we might want to label them Gospters!

Vinnie

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:29 AM

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Yes, I know you enjoy studing new ideas.

It is quite obvious that Galatians 2:7-8 is an interpolation. See THE NON-PAULINE ORIGIN OF THE PARALLELISM OF THE APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL. GALATIANS 2:7-8 by Ernst Barnikol.

That is not convincing. The mss evidence for inclusion is rather solid and requires far more evidence to dismiss it.

http://www.hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2...-2004-323.html

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The problem with interpolation theories is in reconciling them with the rich state of the external evidence, the MSS. In this case, despite the variation between Peter and Cephas, 2:7b-8 is found in all copies of Galatians (where ch. 2 is extant), across all major text-types and regions. Although the earliest witness dates to around 200 (P46), the closest relative of P46, Codex Vaticanus (B), does not reproduce P46's errors, so B is not a descendent of P46 but of common ancestor. Likewise, the next closest relatives (the Alexandrians, Westerns, and family 1739) are not descendents of the most recent common ancestor of P46 and B, which places the archetype of Galatian several generations before 200, well into the beginning of the second century or end of the first, if not sooner. (Unfortunately, Marcion's text for Gal 2:7-8 has not survived.) Given the textual and geographical diversity of the witnesses for Paul and the decentralized nature of Christianity in the second century, it would be difficult to successfully and comprehensively coordinate an interpolation into Paul's letter after publication of the archetype.

There was no "orthodoxy corrupting all the texts" in the 2d century. Its nonsense. Christianity was still fragmented and spread. Any discussion of Pauline interpolation that does not first start with a detailed discussion of mss should not be taken seriously.

Vinnie

show_no_mercy · 08-13-2009, 09:42 AM

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

There was no "orthodoxy corrupting all the texts" in the 2d century. Its nonsense. Christianity was still fragmented and spread. Any discussion of Pauline interpolation that does not first start with a detailed discussion of mss should not be taken seriously.

Of course. Only the "heretics" were the ones corrupting texts, as the "orthodox" was quick to point out, since they were the only honest ones.

Vinnie · 08-13-2009, 09:52 AM

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Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinnie

There was no "orthodoxy corrupting all the texts" in the 2d century. Its nonsense. Christianity was still fragmented and spread. Any discussion of Pauline interpolation that does not first start with a detailed discussion of mss should not be taken seriously.

Of course. Only the "heretics" were the ones corrupting texts, as the "orthodox" was quick to point out, since they were the only honest ones.

The "heretics", I would presume, did not view themselves as such.

Vinnie

Toto · 08-13-2009, 10:02 AM

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

...
There was no "orthodoxy corrupting all the texts" in the 2d century. Its nonsense. Christianity was still fragmented and spread. Any discussion of Pauline interpolation that does not first start with a detailed discussion of mss should not be taken seriously.

Vinnie

Please read Walker's discussion of that issue. He deals with all of your concerns, and concludes that there is a good case for interpolations. I think "Interpolations in the Pauline Letters (or via: amazon.co.uk)" is on Google Books or available in your library.

From my summary at the link I gave you:

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Why is there no surviving text critical evidence of variant readings? Walker replies with a question. Why are there no early texts of any Pauline letters? And no earlier collections? It is clear, he says that Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp and the author of 2 Peter were acquainted with more than one letter [unless, of course, those references were forged, something that should be considered, especially with Ignatius] and the early appearance of the pseudo-Paulines suggests that Paul's letters were known outside the communities they addressed. No earlier forms of any letters have survived, although 2 Cor is widely regarded as composite.

Walker lists two possibilities: the final edited version of the letters made all earlier versions obsolete, or Christians suppressed all earlier versions.

The idea that Christians suppressed all variant texts of Paul's letters is rejected by some as a conspiracy theory, but Walker points out that Marcion's version is missing. [If Marcion's version of Paul?s letters could be suppressed, so could other variant texts.]

Marcion accused his opponents of interpolating material; his opponents accused him of deleting material. "As a matter of historical principle, we cannot simply reject the word of Marcion about this." P-L Couchoud argued that Marcion preserved the original text. It seems at least possible that Marcion deleted some material, and his orthodox opponents added some.

All we know is that the surviving text is the text promoted and perhaps produced by the winners in the struggles of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The capacity of Christians to suppress manuscripts is shown by the example of Tatian's Diatesseron, which the Syrian episcopate made a determined effort to put an end to, so that no copy has survived except for a single leaf of vellum.

An additional factor supporting the possibility that orthodox Christians successfully eliminated any variant copies of Paul's letters is that the church of 180 was more centralized and united that it had been before or after, so the emerging orthodox leadership was in a position to standardize texts.

gurugeorge · 08-13-2009, 10:07 AM

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Originally Posted by Vinnie

Its a fair point, but I am under the impression, since Christianity did not exist in any documented form before this, the individual in Paul must be recent. Do other purely mythical figures have historical details accrete 20 years from when they had actually lived? I ask that question out of a genuine desire to know the answer to it because I don't?

Well, to me, the individual in Paul seems indeterminate wrt time, but if he is, that doesn't mean there must have been people believing in him before Paul.

Paul had a visionary experience at some point in time, the content of which referred to an entity in the past. Nobody need have had that idea before him. However, I do favour the notion that the entity had been posited just before him, by the "Pillars", but the entity they posited was just as historically indeterminate for them - it was a revision of the Messiah idea that they had (perhaps bolstered by visionary revelations similar to those Paul had), not contact with a human being. Paul had maybe heard of this revisionist Messiah idea, and then had a visionary experience, in which - as he supposed - that very entity that had been merely hypothesised by the "Pillars" on the basis of Scripture (and/or perhaps their own visionary revelations), spoke to him directly.

I mean, let's face it - a huge part of religion worldwide, and in every culture, and in every form of religion (not even excepting Buddhism and Daoism) is people having visionary experiences of entities that appear to talk to them and give them "teachings". Far from being an oddity, it's the most common religious trope. It would be no big shakes if some perfervid Scripture-poring disappointed-apocalyptic-verging-on-proto-Gnostic mystics had the Big Idea that everyone else's idea of the Messiah had been wrong, and that he wasn't one to come, but one who had been and gone, and the victory had therefore already been won (albeit in a spiritual sense). It would be no great shakes if another mystically-inclined person heard of the idea and then had his own visionary experience of it, and been inspired to spread the idea, and induce the same (seeming) direct contact with the divine in others.

To me, if you place this against this bizarre posited hodgepodge of orthodox biblical scholarship - that some obscure guy was yet inspiring enough to immediately be divinised by his earliest followers, who apparently had no interest in his teachings (if so, what was so inspiring about him or them?), etc., etc., etc., etc., "oral tradition", blah-de-blah-de-blah ... Well, it's such a Heath Robinson contraption compared to my elegant thesis above

(Please for God's sake Vinnie don't ask me to back this up!

- but to give you some context, the version of mythicism I'm espousing here is my own tenuous web of speculation based on my reading mainly of Price, the Dutch Radicals, Doherty and Bauer (Heresy & Orthodoxy), plus occasionally taking a gander at translations of the sources. I've gone over it so many times I'm pretty sure it's coherently based on a certain skein of arguments that's common to these authors, and that gives plausibility; but for truth I'm merely trusting that the scholarly work they've done is sound - and that's always open to question!)

There have been a few threads discussing historicized mythical entities - I think William Tell is one that Wells used as an example. There are others but I can't recall them atm.

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